Streetcorner Preacher

I remember a time when, in seminary, we had gone as a group with a professor as a facilitator into the various contexts to which we had each been assigned as students. Debbie and I lived in a challenging neighborhood called West Phillips in Minneapolis and our contextual “cluster” visited with a pastor not four blocks down the street.

We were discussing the needs of the neighborhood and where the church might fit in and somewhere in the midst of the conversation (more of a lecture really) this pastor mentioned that he had some competition in the neighborhood, (not meaning the church where I was assigned, less than a quarter-mile away, we were no competition) a street preacher named Brother Bill who preached up and down the block.

He then sighed and shook his head and said that it wasn’t really much competition, Bill didn’t have a church to call home so there wasn’t much to his preaching.

I don’t think that it occurred to me at the time what an incredibly pompous thought that this was. Looking back I have a hard time not thinking of this devoted servant of Christ as a sadly insulated soul, stuck thinking that the trappings contribute to the Word, or that their message is not valid without them. While I understand that given a replay of his comment he would deny that this was the gist of the comment, you still cannot get it back into the tube, so to speak, like toothpaste. It is the defining thing that has formed my thinking of this man and I wonder how many stupid, conceited, self-righteous things I have said that have formed the central nugget of peoples’ thoughts about me?

In any case, Debbie heard Amos Lee on NPR the other day and heard him perform his song Street Corner Preacher and it made me think of that. Nothing special, just wondering how people would react.

Man is it smoky!

Caitlyn and I foolishly drove up north to try and get away from the smoke this past Monday (23rd) because the only fires on the news were in Napa and Santa Cruz.

What they didn’t mention was that there were over 100 fires in Mendocino County and so instead of driving into the clear blue sky we were driving into a scene from The Fog.

so we went, and later found out that the place we were going (Caitlyn has a favorite place to get her Carhartt overalls) was on the border of the areas being evacuated in front of the fires.

All in all a failure if the end of the adventure was to avoid the smoke, but a pleasant day with my daughter. And what could be better than that?

Each day is a blessing beyond compare. let us stop trying to compare them with other things.

Feed me!

if you want to know the kind of Land of the Lost world in which I live, check out this plant in front of a house down the street.

I think that there must be a sleestack under that tarp, torturing Marshall, Will and Holly.

on children and friendship

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember a time when you were almost expected to have your children’s parents be your friends to some extent or another. You ran into them all the time, you had at least one thing in common, you raised money together for school trips etc.

A couple of things have brought this to mind and I was wondering what people thought about it. I, of course, have my own ideas which I’ll share, but feel free to rip ‘em up if you need to.

One instance has to do with some people we met during the past year. Our daughter and theirs struck up a friendship (Caitlyn is very social, she has no fear of a playground scene in which she comes up and asks “would you like to play with me?”) which was continued over and over at the park right next door, it resulted in a sleep over at their house and the promise of reciprocation and future get-togethers.

And then it stopped. Not from our side, in fact each time we turned the corner into our neighborhood, Caitlyn would ask me to look over and tell her if her friend was home. If I saw both cars in the driveway we’d go home and call the house to see if there could be a play-date at the park or some such meeting. I don’t think I ever got directly through but rather had to leave a message inviting the girl and her family over for dinner, to the park, for a sleepover, various different possibilities for letting the kids play.

Honestly I was also looking forward to making friends that had nothing to do with church. At some level it was nice to think that I’d have a friend that I didn’t have to be “pastor” for all the time. But more than that it became troubling to me when almost none of the invitations was even responded to, let alone accepted and each time Caitlyn asked me to see if her “friend” was at home, I began to lie and say that she wasn’t. I wasn’t able to come up with an explanation for a four-year-old about how sometimes people aren’t there for you when you need them, let alone at all.

Now I’m not without understanding about how summer days can get packed with events and family. If you can’t make it, the you can’t make it and that’s okay. But I guess that it is the fact that if their daughter had even half of the interest in seeing Caitlyn that Caitlyn felt, then it seems curious that nothing was done about it. But I try (and admittedly fail) to make sure that the appropriate phone call is made, that the people who are waiting for a call get one.
I don’t know how this all came about, but it bothers me that people can be so fickle, or such slackers when it comes to the lives of their children. I’m pretty devoted, as far as parents go, and it would never occur to me to inhibit in any way Caitlyn’s possibilities of having a happy life. I’d do anything, even call in what has turned out to be a fruitless exercise.

The other thing that brought this to mind was just odd, rather than being troubling. Caitlyn has a friend from preschool whose class is right next to hers in kindergarten (curiously, so does the girl from the previous question). One day they asked if they could have a play date over at our house and I said sure. I can easily work from homeand I had no visits scheduled that afternoon so I spent it cleaning up behind the two girls. They had fun, so did I, it was good.

I couldn’t believe how many times they thanked me for doing it. Somehow an afternoon about the kids turned into a favor to the parents and they offered again and again to return the favor, to me.

I thought it was about the kids, I have the ability that fewer parents have of skipping an afternoon in the office and head home or wherever, but though it’s probably my imagination it seemed to turn into a way to relieve parents of the responsibility for caring for the kids for a day. Granted, Caitlyn is in after-school care here at church so I don’t bear that burden every day, but it just struck me as odd that the opportunity to give the kids a good afternoon would be seen a s a way for parents to have the afternoon off.

I mean, I like taking Caitlyn with me when I go shopping, or downtown. I like the opportunity to get out of work and hang out with her. I wasn’t doing them a favor, they were doing me a favor by letting em play 50% hooky and hang out with the girl. Even so, I just now thought of that reasoning, it wasn’t even in my mind at the time, I was just trying to be a good daddy.

I guess that it boils down to the fact that it seems odd to me, one family seems willing to foster friendship between the ids but also seems way too unreliable for me to risk Caitlyn’s fragile trust in them, the other seems so burdened (they do have other children) that they take a play day as a favor to them instead of the children. Honestly, I’d have taken all of the kids that day, it was no big deal.

One week in

Well, I haven’t spent as much time as I’d like up at the racnh. We spent four days up there last week and we had a good time and got lots done but there’s always more.

Sort of like in ministry

so now my thoughts are turning to comign back to work, not coming back early, but thoughts of work which have been absent for a while are resurfacing. Odd to think that there’s some kind of deep attraction to feeling pulled in a thousand ways, but there is. I’ve always fought against the idea that there was something special about the people who answer the call to ministry but I think that there is something, some kind of willingness to put yourself as simply “one of the people” rather than spending all your time protecting yourself. I’m just another guy in line for my own attention instead of the first guy in line all the time, and so the concerns of the rest of the world begin to intrude.

but I feel better rested now, lots of little things are feeling better, more stable. What a blessing to have that time to decompress.

precious savior, with all that surrounds us and barks at our doors, remind us that “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength” Isaiah 30:15

give us that strength and remind us to claim the rest that is ours because we do not cause the sun to shine, nor the earth to bear fruit nor the lost to come to faith in You. Let us put down the burden of the whole world, and perhaps remember that they have already been carried by you.

from a friend (Communion cont’d)

A friend of mine whose blog is to remain private (at her request) posted this in April . . .

(it is interesting to note that this company was vanished from the web, the unit is described below, but apparently we cannot see a picture any more, the site exists only at archive.com) <<note>> Lauren found the cups under another name here in her reply below<<note>>

we get the wierdest stuff in the mail. check this one out; we got a sample package this week.

evidently, when time and hygiene are of the essence, it is better to used prepackaged communion. this particular product is called “the celebration cup.” its brochure tells me that it “contains the same simple elements that have been served for centuries, a wafer of unleavened bread and a small cup of juice. but, while the elements are traditional, the packaging is revolutionary. using patented technology, the celebration cup is uniquely designed to hold bread and juice together in a single, recyclable plastic cup. each individual serving is pre-packed, purity-sealed, and virtually germ-free. each serving is prepared in a hygienic facility that adheres to strict fda standards.”

why do this? they tell me that communion “is a practice too profound to alter, too precious to change. yet, while the practice must remain the same, the process has room for improvement. for many churches, preparing the elements, passing the trays, and cleaning up is very time consuming.”

what’s the desired result? “worship without worry. and a new found freedom in sharing the most meaningful sacrament of all.”

anyone else smell a maundy thursday sermon?

i really do understand the dilemma of trying to distribute communion to a huge number of people (i’ve been to a national elca youth gathering!); i’m sure it’s nearly impossible for some of those megachurches to do it. and the more people you have, the bigger chaos, the bigger mess to clean up, etc. and i can see how it would be convenient to take them to camp, up on a mountain, or to the hospital. plus, they do take visa, mastercard, and discover.

however, here are my top ten reasons NOT to use the celebration cup:

1) these are intended to be passed out in trays into the pews so no one ever has to move. maybe it’s just me, but peeling back your own air-tight seal doesn’t have the same impact as being given the body and blood of christ by someone else.

2) i don’t think jesus really cared about fda standards.

3) anything that comes in pink and purple packaging doesn’t strike me as “reverent,” no matter what this company says.

4) i’m not sure worry-free worship is really our goal.

5) shipping and handling is $5.95, plus 7% for each additional box.

6) the emphasis on purity and hygiene is a little bit much for me, especially in our current climate of fear, fear, and more fear.

7) currently, they only produce celebration cups with grape juice.

i’d never get to use my cool communion set they gave me at messiah.

9)

10)

okay, those are only eight reasons, but i think they’re good ones. anyone have reasons 9 and 10?

I’m NOT yanking the rug out from under

I think I should clear this up.

it appears that whenever I bring something up, people might assume I’m going to change something in some kind of drastic way. Let me state clearly:

This is a forum for discussion, not a decisions-making body and not a place where I’m announcing change

I want to hear what you think, not how hard you’ll fight to defend your territory. I want to know what you love about something, not how well it works in Fresno cuz let me tell you, this ain’t Fresno. I’d love for you to disagree with me but not to fear what I’m gonna do. Even when we changed the worship service there were five meetings where the possibilities for worship were discussed and what changes happened were the direct result of those meetings. I am not in a mood to yank the rug out from under anyone, I just want this to be a forum for ideas

because I’m gonna get on your nerves a lot more if I don’t know what you think and I just blunder from issue to issue

This is not to say that I’ll stop advocating for my position, that’s pretty much why we define positions, so we can convince other people of them. I went to the seminary because I wanted my opinions about the church and its business to have some sort of foundation in theology, specifically lutheran theology. Out of that come a lot of my opinions, and I’m convinced of them. But theology seldom builds a church, most of the time it’s people, diverse, strong, weak, simple, complicated stubborn people like you and me. I’d like us to try and find a space where we can disagree openly, completely and still come away the children of God, joined at the savior, so to speak without the whole thing descending into rancor.

try and convince me, and I’ll try and convince you, but I promise that I’ll not just yank away something essential for your worship because I think I’m right. You may also expect me to call you on it if I find you doing the same thing, though.

just food for thought

Holy Lord, each time we are confronted by something we find rightening or unpleasant we have a choice. We can tread the path of fear or the path of grace. One way will keep us safe and comfortable because we will circle around the things we hold dear to protect them. Remind us that when we are gathered around our precious things, we are in effect hiding them from the world so that nobody else can find them precious. The other path is also fraught with peril because we must walk this path blindfolded, arms open, our hearts exposed. As in all things, remind us that no person can drive another down the path, but we must choose the paths we will walk and respect the paths of others because if we don’t, we cannot expect their love or respect in return. As the Buddha reminds us, let us seek the middle path and find peace,

The 14th

Not only Mother's Day for the best mom in the world (Debbie), but also my 40th birthday. No head-banging or forgetfulness at church, pretty good sermon, no adult hour because the congregation surprised me with a birthday cake. It would have been even better had I not just started on the no-carb portion of my diet and so that and the family Mother's Day picnic were protein intensive, lots of chicken and burger. Then a member was out of town and she left me her symphony ticket for that day. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring  and Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2 both fabulous performances.

A good day all around.

On another note, I found out that the best man from our wedding has a myspace site that is quite funny, he's a comedian, after all.

Nice to have the good days, Lord. Things are too quiet when they're good all the time, so it's good to have the strength to hear your Word in our lives when heads fall onto altars and locks fail to open. Give us the good with the bad and the grace not to give a rip one way or the other.

Ubi Caritas

I had the opportunity to actually help.

A man came to me, proud but humbled, needing our help.

At the loss of his wife, he has fallen upon difficult times. A fascinating man, born in China, with a Russian name, he fought in WWII, made a life for himself, married, lost, loved again, lost, lived and stayed vital. An oversight almost two decades old threatens his ability to live in dignity.

What is the strange power that exists within each of us to love another human being and whence the joy at being able to help? I felt the joy today in a way that hadn't been true with some of the other instances in which help was sought. Was it the lack of judgment? Was it the sorrowful pride? Was it the fact that I got to go on vacation (Beginning friday) with a bit of good-deed shine on my face?

Promising and delivering Lord, grant that each day may bring into our lives not just the opportunity to love and to serve your creation, since the opportunities are with us every day, but also the humility to see your face in those whose need is greatest, whose heart is broken, whose dignity and ability to live abundantly is at risk and to answer out of the Gospel message of love first. Grant us the heart that loves foolishly, risking everything for the sake of the lowest and meanest of all. 

No more mister Nice Guy

I'm tired of just writing about the vicissitudes of ministry, I actually have a political or social thing to say as well. It may not always be pretty, but it'll always be honest, it's called Exousia, check it out!